Press
Moving, spirit-style
Atlanta dance company serves inner-city, brings troupe of youngsters to perform in Athens
By Chris J. Starrs
Correspondent
Story updated at 12:15 AM on Monday, July 9, 2007
The Atlanta-based Moving in the Spirit Apprentice Corp. has danced in locales like New York City, San Francisco, Paris and the Czech Republic during its 21-year existence, but the group’s 2007 summer tour – also known as Tour Explosion! – will be particularly poignant for the organization’s co-founder and artistic director.
One of the tour stops for Moving in the Spirit, a teen performing company and leadership training program, will make a three-day residency in Athens, where Dana Lupton graduated from the University of Georgia in 1986.
“It feels like coming home,” says Lupton, who co-founded Moving in the Spirit in 1986 with fellow UGA alum Leah Mann.
Although Lupton earned a business degree at Georgia, she says she was given permission by then-department head Mark Wheeler to take dance classes and perform in productions. The Augusta native grew up dancing, but her UGA experience helped take her dancing and her philosophy to a new level.
“It really opened up my world and helped me understand how important dance is to building communities and friendships, and to changing the world,” she says. “Being at Georgia opened me up in a way dance never had before.”
The dance troupe – which consists of eight girls and two boys – will open its residency with a performance at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Oconee Street Boys & Girls Club. On Wednesday, the ensemble will perform at 7 p.m. in the UGA Dance Department’s New Dance Theatre. There is no admission charge, but a donation for the group will be taken.
“The folks in the Dance Department have been so kind to us,” says Lupton. “I told the kids to expect a long, hard-working day in a professional venue.”
Moving in the Spirit’s Classic City sojourn will conclude on Thursday with a workshop and performance at Canopy Studio, Athens‘ trapeze movement performance center.
“We’re really thrilled about that,” says Lupton. “We’ll take a class and then we’ll do a small show for Canopy’s staff and students.”
The group also has similar activities scheduled in Asheville and Morehead City, N.C.
Lupton says she and Mann (who now owns and operates Seattle-based Lelavision, a performance group that mixes dance with kinetic musical sculpture, and has performed in Athens several times) established Moving in the Spirit to unite their love for dance with their commitment to social justice.
Their programs were designed to instill confidence, discipline and commitment to inner-city youngsters through dance.
“We were so green, but we had a dream,” says Lupton, whose studio and offices are located off Interstate 20 near Glenwood Road. “We had a passion to help the community and to build leaders.”
The dancers have spent much time and energy preparing for the tour’s shows, which include a lively four-minute African-influenced dance, a 12-minute dance on the history of intolerance and a lighter piece built around the history of the blues.
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